CityLight Church to celebrate anniversary, release worship EP 

Album art for HEART CELEBRATION. Courtesy CityLight Church
Album art for HEART CELEBRATION.
Courtesy CityLight Church

CityLight Church in Gainesville will reach its sixth anniversary on Jan. 26, and the church will release HEART CELEBRATION to mark the milestone.  

The extended play (EP) will have three songs written and produced by Dominick Failla, the church’s worship arts director. He said the songs will include artists from Central Florida, Georgia and Tennessee who provided drums, guitar, piano and other tracks, plus lyric assistance from Cross Point Church of God’s Sarah Spade.  

The church has released worship songs online and across streaming services, but this will be the first multi-song release. The EP will include two songs that Failla classifies as typical contemporary Christian music.  

Become A Member

Mainstreet does not have a paywall, but pavement-pounding journalism is not free. Join your neighbors who make this vital work possible.

The third song is a curveball, he said.  

“I also like to have songs that are almost like undercover, where someone could turn it on and people might not necessarily know that it’s a Christian song—not because the lyrics are ambiguous but because it’s not in the style that I think you would typically expect a Christian song to be,” Failla said. 

The songs in the EP will be NEVER FAR, OH THE GRAVE and HEART CELEBRATION.  

He said OH THE GRAVE is the undercover song for the EP. He said the song gets compared to the style of Oliver Tree, an artist between pop and alternative. It’s also the second time the song got created following an erased computer.  

Failla said an EP allowed him to focus on the strongest songs he’d written so far while also giving a manageable workload to produce in time for the anniversary. He didn’t want to show up to January with a half-done album. Just one song, HEART CELEBRATION, has 140 different tracks, he noted.  

Failla has previously released songs for his former church in Central Florida. Music and songwriting, he said, always seemed natural, and his grandfather was a pianist and played other instruments, steeping him in music early. 

“There’s really never been a choice B, and I’ve always just felt very called to it,” Failla said. “It’s one of those things that I can’t really imagine myself doing something else.” 

But he said it’s a learning and improving process.  

Dominick Failla in his office at CityLight Church. Photo by Seth Johnson
Photo by Seth Johnson Dominick Failla in his office at CityLight Church.

Early songs were packed with every new trick Failla learned about producing and music. Now, he said he knows not to overstuff a song.  

He’s also learned to distance his worth from the music he puts out.  

If the EP gets no streams or uses outside CityLight, he said that’s alright. By forcing himself to write the second and third verses and producing the songs, Failla said his relationship with God has grown, along with his personal relationships around him.  

Hopefully, he said, that’s not the case, but as a worst-case scenario, it’s a fine position. 

He said a sermon by Mike Donehey, lead singer for Tenth Avenue North, changed his perspective on the topic. But it’s still tough in practice, he said. 

“I pray about these songs a lot, and I know God was a part of them,” Failla said. “I just want to make sure that, at the end of the day, God is glorified through it, and whatever he wants to do with them is all right by me.” 

Subscribe
Notify of
guest
1 Comment
Oldest
Newest Most Voted
Inline Feedbacks
View all comments
Maria Parkhurst

I am looking forward to the EP! Dominick is very talented and God is using him for a good work.